F5J Electric at the State Field 22 November 2015

After the previous f5j event got blown out, it was good to have a calm and sunny afternoon for RCGA round 1 of f5j electric glider at the VMAA, state field in daraweit-guim. It surprised me, since the State Field location is notoriously windy.

After a great lunch kindly prepared by the Northern Flying Group, we got stuck into the flying. In contrast to the morning's f3k competition's strong and tight thermals, the afternoon was dominated by big broad thermals which softened in strength as the day progressed,

David had some bad luck with a thermal willy willy damaging one of his 2 planes before we even started, He also had persistent power issues, which with the accompanying low starts, helped him win several heats.

Wren had his brand new f5j Kappa 35 which looks impressive but needed more sorting out by Wren.

Working the tree lines payed off some of the time, but with the trees not that close, of course it meant needing good depth perception.

Bob flew his Ava to great effect although he did managing to land on the wrong side of the trees one heat, unscathed.

Marcus with another new plane, a home build by Alan Mayhew, called a Preigo. Alan may be regretting selling it, because Marcus put in an amazing flight in the back corner with it, where the tree lines meet, alternating above and below tree height, in the end winning the heat.

Unfortunately attempting to emulate his low level escape on his last flight, landed Marcus in the top branches of a 25 metre tall gum tree.

So once we were finished and packed up, it was off to see if we could get it out of the tree.

Thankfully with a squid pole, (usually reserved for a wind direction streamer) and some winch line Dave Pratley managed to rescue the plane undamaged.

Dave retrieving Marcus's glider be/ukvlrnu2lvs see video here